North Korea is like the stupid drunk guys who yells and screams about how he's going to kick everyone's ass, and everyone else is too smart to take him up on it, but they still worry a little because they think he might keep a gun in his car, but there's a pretty good chance he can't even remember where he parked his car.

It's not just a refugee crisis that South Korea is really worried about, it's the NK's 5000 hardened artillery positions within firing range of Seoul. If NK gets hit bombed by the west, even a little, even just the nuke sites, the north will probably start firing shells at Seoul.

How long would it take us to disable Five Thousand long-range artillery pieces, each embedded in its own hardened concrete bunker? Not hours, days would be the best case, a week would be most accurate. Getting through hardened concrete takes a direct hit from a large, directed munition. Drones might help, repeated counter-battery might work, eventually, but one suspects most of the heavy lifting would be done by manned aircraft and laser guided 2,000 lb bombs. 5,000 is a lot of sorties.

Here's the big deal. How many shots would the NK howitzers get off before being destroyed? Modern artillery can fire a few rounds a minute, but lets say that each of the 5000 fire just 1 round per minute and are - on average, destroyed after just one hour of firing.

Using that artificially low rate of fire and terribly optimistic rate of destroying their guns, it would still result in 300,000 high explosive and incendiary shells hitting Seoul in the first hour of fighting. After the first hour of fighting, Seoul would look like Dresden. If the war came on fast, in response to say, a surprise attack by the west, a good proportion of Seoul's 25 million population would see their last day on earth.

It's not Best Korea's nukes that have everyone in the South worried, it's their half-century old gun tech. Which unless we have some new technology hidden away that is able to instantly disable 5000 howitzers, the chances of a preemptive strike against the north's nukes is about as close to 0% as it gets.

They don't seem to be real worried about it, either, from what I've seen

/I don't believe for a minute this situation is any different from the dozen other times Best Korea has screamed and squealed and stomped it's little feet

I agree; the south would tear through the Norks like chilli through an old folks home.

Pretty much. I was talking about this over Facebook with my brother the other day, and this was his take on it:

"Here's the thing with Best Korea: They do not know how to get their way in the international scene by any other means than saber rattling. They're like a small, petulant child who only throws tantrums, and the international community, like parents who are frustrated and tired, simply give in after a while because they don't want the screaming to keep happening in public.

"If they do go nutso and ACTUALLY try something, however, the result will probably be initially quite bad but over very fast. Seoul will get pounded, and there will be a lot of casualties there. Which is horrible. But after taking a bloody nose from the DPRK, the South Korea/US alliance will pound their military into a fine powder. Currently we have two aircraft carrier battle groups within strike range, plus two divisions of ground troops and two wings of land-based aircraft. The technology level of DPRK is ancient compared to this, I mean hell, they're still flying MiG-17s, which are Korean War-era aircraft. Grand total they have around 110 operational aircraft out of a claimed 1,500. A single squadron of F/A-18s and a couple Arliegh Burke-class cruisers would be enough to deal with that.

"And don't worry about China in all this. China knows if a war starts, they're going to be dealing with MILLIONS of Korean refugees, a humanitarian disaster on a scale they've never had. They are getting really frustrated with the little pipsqueak they said they'd defend, and just recently voted FOR the UN sanctions in the security council. If a war does happen, you'll see China make a wall of soldiers just behind the Yalu River, and that will be the anvil against which the US/South Korea hammer strikes."